The One Where Logan Goes to TAHITI
by cattyk8
Summary: Nick Fury watches from afar as a newlywed Logan Echolls walks toward his wife's car. S4 fix-it fic. Part of "The Ones Where Logan Lives" series originally posted on AO3.


**The One Where Logan Goes To TAHITI**  
by cattyk8

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**SUMMARY**

Nick Fury watches from afar as a newlywed Logan Echolls walks toward his wife's car. S4 fix-it fic. Part of "The Ones Where Logan Lives" series originally posted on AO3.

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_**IMPORTANT NOTES:**_

_Soooo… this was inspired by the knowledge that Lisa Rinna, who plays Lynn Echolls, also once played the SHIELD agent known as Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine in the __Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD__ TV movie starring David Hasselhoff which the author doesn't remember at all except for a vague vibe of awfulness. Anyway, you don't need to know anything about that movie to read this, but there are a few references to characters and events in the Avengers movies and __Captain America: Civil War__._

_TRIGGER WARNING: Logan does die in this one, if only for a short while. In an explosion. So warnings for description of severe bodily injury and major (if temporary) character death._

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Nick Fury watched as the boy walked toward the car. The newly married couple chatted through the window of the apartment they shared.

He had nearly missed their wedding; he'd heard about it late, and hadn't managed to watch the couple exchange vows. He'd followed them home, hoping to catch sight of the newlyweds before they left for their honeymoon.

He owed it to the boy to make sure he was happy, after all. Or, more accurately, the boy's mother.

It had been 35 years since he'd sent Agent of SHIELD Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine on a mission with a backstopped identity as a dewy-eyed starlet looking to catch a big break among Hollywood's rich, famous, and oh-so-corrupt. It had been 35 years since massive head trauma had left Val with complete amnesia, surrounded by people who'd only known her cover persona. Thirty five years since he'd walked into her hospital room and seen no recognition in the eyes of an agent he'd long called a friend. And left her there.

He'd followed her career after that. Had been both amused and bitter over the fact that the critics who'd dismissed Lynn Echolls as yet another talentless bimbo had lauded her acting in the roles she took on after the "car crash" that had nearly taken her life. She'd been purposefully bad at acting before; after losing her memory, she'd thrown herself whole-heartedly into her roles.

When she'd fallen for up-and-coming action star Aaron Echolls, he'd nearly pulled her out, memory bedamned. His gut had told him the guy was no good, and over the years he'd learned to trust his gut, no matter how much of a golden boy the actor seemed to be, at least in the media's eye. But then she'd had the boy and had seemed to settle down into her life as a wife and mother. He'd left her to her life.

He might have looked her up, but then the Iraq War had started up, and that had been a HYDRA-instigated clusterfuck that had kept him way too busy to indulge in what was, at this point, a personal project. She'd come up on his radar again when her husband had been stabbed, supposedly by a floozy he'd bedded on the side. One among many, apparently.

And then she'd jumped off the Coronado Bridge.

He'd known regret then, for the friend he'd once had, for the life she'd lived with the man who'd proven to be a monster of the human kind, judging from the coverage of the Lilly Kane murder trial.

He'd kept an eye on her boy as best he could. Echolls had gone through a rough patch in college, and just when Fury had been all set to beat some sense into the boy, he'd up and joined the Navy. As a pilot. He'd gotten reports on the boy after that, had been proud of his progress if disapproving of his relationships. That Bonnie DeVille (_seriously? Like Cruella? _) had been no good for the boy's heart or career. As was proved when he was framed for her murder.

He'd been all set to intervene in what was obviously a poorly conducted investigation when HYDRA had once again caused things to go FUBAR, and he'd found out that the damned Nazis had managed to infiltrate SHIELD.

By the time he'd gotten things back on track, Echolls had been shacked up with his ex from high school, a blonde spitfire he might've considered recruiting if she'd shown any sign of being able to fit into an organization like SHIELD, given her inclination to go off half-cocked before taking the time to get a sense of the big picture. Her disrespect for authority and protocol were equally well documented. Echolls, meanwhile, had turned out to be an ace pilot and an even better naval intelligence officer.

When Fury had sent the Black Widow to vet them, she'd given Echolls a green light, but had cautioned against recruiting Mars with language stronger than she'd used in her assessments of Tony Stark. And added in the assessment that he hadn't a hope in hell of recruiting one without the other—or getting them to work separately.

So he'd backed off. He got plenty of snark and more than his fair share of headaches from the Avengers and their affiliates; he didn't need Mars and Echolls on top of that.

When he'd heard they were getting married, sudden nostalgia for an agent long-dead, for a time when he'd had friends in SHIELD rather than headaches and subordinates, had had him hopping on a jet to spy on the ceremony.

Coming out of his reverie, he gazed again at the boy, the one who'd inherited Val's sharp intelligence and sharper wit, her flair for drama and compassion for her friends, and her unwavering sense of duty and honor. He hoped that, wherever she was, she'd be happy to see the light in the boy's eyes, the giddiness in his movements as Echolls approached his wife's car.

And then the world was a crash of sound and light and heat as the car exploded.

Fury was out of his own car in an instant, bending over the prone form of the only casualty of the bomb, one Logan Echolls. He felt for a pulse, and found none. Looked into the boy's ravaged face to see Val's brown eyes staring sightlessly.

He swore.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

In a split-second decision, and cursing his own sentimentality, he hauled the body up, dragged it to his car. He pulled out of his parking spot with a squeal of tires and put the pedal to the metal as he made his way to the air strip where a jet was waiting to take him back to SHIELD headquarters.

As he drove, he called his second-in-command. Maria Hill picked up on the second ring.

"Hill," he snapped. "Call Phil Coulson, have him report to HQ ASAP." The agent had been killed by a Norse god prior to the Battle of New York and that goddamn alien invasion, but he'd managed to pull strings and use one of SHIELD's top-secret projects to correct that mistake. And he might be a sentimental fool, but if there was some sort of afterlife, he'd be damned if he would look Val in the eye and tell her he hadn't done whatever he could to save her son.

"Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?" God _damn _, Maria Hill was a gift. She was the best right hand he'd ever had. And a damn fine agent too. As evidenced by the fact that she wasn't questioning him for calling when he'd logged today off as personal time.

"Yeah. Get read in on Project TAHITI, then call the agent in charge. I've got a new candidate for them, and they'll need to act fast."

"Project TAHITI? Didn't you tell Agent Coulson you were shutting that down?"

"Yeah, well, SHIELD has a debt to pay." And Nick Fury owed it to his old partner to make sure her boy got a chance at a full, long life. Logan Echolls was going to live, even if he had to use alien science to make it happen.

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_**END NOTES:**_

_If you aren't familiar with the TV show Agents of SHIELD, Project TAHITI (Terrestrialized Alien Host Integrative Tissue I) was a secret SHIELD project that enabled the organization to resurrect Agent Phil Coulson after he died in __The Avengers__._

_This fic originally appeared as part of "The Ones Where Logan Lives," posted on Archive of Our Own. The premise for the collection: Eight authors. Thirty-__six __fanfics. One fic posted every day, starting in November, all with the same mission: save Logan Echolls._

_Cover art by the amazing jmazzy, who also runs allthevmff on Twitter. Thank you to Irma66 and CubbieGirl1723 for the beta read and also for information on S4, which I haven't actually seen (and may never, if what I've been spoiled about is only the tip of the iceberg)._

_A playlist for the collection can be found on Spotify — the song for this fic is "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence._

_As it happens, I have a few fics posted as part of the collection apart from this one: "The One with the Swords" is a _Highlander_ crossover, and "The One Where Logan Loses His Clothes" is a fusion with the 2014 TV series Forever. Please do check them out here or on AO3 if and when you have the time, as well as the other amazing stories in the collection, which were written by people who actually know what they're doing!  
_


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